Reviews: Shriver, Lionel

The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 —
Lionel Shriver

Lionel
Shriver’s 2016 The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 is
the third in a series of reviews … a series I am increasingly coming to
repent ever having begun.

When
investors decline to continue funding America’s soaring debt, the
US’s foreign-born Latino President decides the only acceptable
solution is to default on the debts. The consequences will
reverberate for decades.

Many
members of the implausibly named Mandible family used to take comfort
from the knowledge that when their irascible patriarch finally died,
his fortune would be divided among them. But the collapse of the US
dollar (and the American economy with it) has stripped the old man of
most of his assets. His remaining assets have lost most of their
value. The Mandibles and America with them will be forced to do
something unthinkable: adapt to changing circumstances.